Excerpt: The Silent Generations

(From the forthcoming novel* by M. Allen Cunningham)

HANNIBAL & ST. JOSEPH RAILROAD COMPANYSalvage, MO
Friend Alma,
If it happens that you did reply to my last letter you could not know to address me in Missouri of all places. I must be a fool for I left Appanoose Co. intending travel West but by some blunder consented to go South instead. As they needed a man at this office and as I am the more easily hoodwinked than others I am down here at Salvage. My position here is called Expensing Clerk for I sell tickets, send messages, expense bills. I am really an ordinary operator besides.            The Hannibal & St. Jo you may notice is something less than my ideal employer. But this was to be just a meantime arrangement. I do not know yet exactly how long they shall need me, it is day by day, but that it is not permanent is consoling. The managers know I am bound West. I won’t let them forget it in fact for I ache to go.            To illustrate what an awful heathendom I am in I will give you the happenings of one night. A gentleman by the name J.S. Shanks was in town. Much in Salvage spirit Mr. Shanks washed a late evening away in drink and then, starting home along the RR, was run down by the mail express. This man left his family over to Kansas City some days before and never telling them where he was bound, and until they read news of his sudden death they’d had no clue to his whereabouts. The papers say he was a postal agent of decent character whose conduct had lately taken a turn for the worse. Good Lord it troubles me to hear of such men. Salvage seems to draw them. One must ask of oneself, Were I a Mr. Shanks would I have the sight to see how lost I’d got? Or does a soul stray blind over some toeline and never notice? Does it not haunt you to think of it Alma, what senseless wanderings can overtake us, or how small an accident can kill a body. Is there not some hand that authors us? Do you not sometimes feel it is so?            And Mr. Shanks’s ignominious end was but one event. Same evening: an elder of the Christian church shot twice at his daughter crippling the girl for life. Same evening: two men at drinking got up a rumpus that spilled from a saloon into one of the main streets here in town. It was all fisticuffs till one was knocked thoughtless. But the winner of this brawl, wanting better bloodshed, ran back inside to fetch an iron poker and none in the crowd made to stop him as he laid in with it on the felled man. That man is not expected to live. Same evening: had three different fires in town.            If I had not written this letter I would hardly believe its reports. This is my dwelling place at the start of my journey. Does it hang an ill star above my going away, you think? I try to believe not. But that I blundered coming here is certain. Can the Wild West be wilder than this? I do wonder at times now why I am going. Why I left, I mean. But then I remember Perpetua and my life there and all is clear again.            I’m afraid this shapes up to be another letter with “Disagreeable” writ large all over it. And what temerity from one whose correspondence you may have declined to welcome by now (in your last letter I mean, which I have not rec’d).            I might as well say it. One wants to speak rightly to a soul like you. Some moments I think this must be one reason I saw fit to leave — in order to talk to you in letters as I likely wouldn’t in person. Has the Authoring Hand made this so? Maybe so, in which case I cannot judge the Hand ill as I’ve been tempted to. I do want to be clear and well in my letters so as to provide you reason to await instead of dread them. Would that this imperfect science of word, comma, and period had something pure and singing in it like the Electrical Energy of the telegraph wires. I think if the wire signal were itself the message not just the means, or if we mortals needed nothing but currents to link up each to each and be understood, we would likely become more perfect creatures and this world a kinder place. After the natural murderers had all murdered each other that is.            I will tell you (though you’ll think me a fool) that this is my second try at this letter today. Quitting work for the evening I went around to the rear of the Depot house to sit upon a freight truck and pencil my thoughts to you. My hotel I’ve discovered is much too noisy and disorders my brain (I do not sleep at all here despite exhaustion but that is a different affair). A wind had come up, it was roaring along the station platform. Just as I finished a page my paper was snatched away. It flew so quick I didn’t bother to scramble after it. I just watched it flap West along the tracks and I suppose it is to St. Jo by now if somebody in a passing train didn’t reach out a window and catch it. Why do I tell you this besides to make you smile at my expense? Because as I watched the letter fly I began to think it was best, maybe meant to be, if you see my meaning. Oh what can anybody do whether writing a letter or trying to speak to another to make oneself understood? Some wind takes our words Alma and flings them. We cannot say how they go or how unscathed our fragile thoughts will be once heard or read. I suppose it must happen that words messages letters bring one soul closer to another and not infrequently either. But to me it’s a mystery.            Anyhow, I now write this sitting up in the stablehouse behind the Depot. It is windy yet and warm though nearly midnight. Knowing how fires like this town I guess I’d better put out my lamp for thought of the straw around me and get back to my hotel. I tell you I almost fear to walk so late through the Salvage MO darkness. As a price for writing to you however that is nothing to pay. If you only knew what a relief it is to me after answering questions at the office all day to sit down in this strange place and think on the goodness of a soul like yours you would excuse the disagreeable illegible and uninteresting parts in this.            Very Respt’            BenjaminI will await reply to this if one is coming before hectoring you with another. Never fear.     

(*"Forthcoming novel" = date & circumstances of publication tbd. Could still be a while ... )